With a spring in his step, Vladimir Putin rushes into the Catherine Hall of the Kremlin.

The Russian President holds a piece of paper in his right hand and waves his left arm back and forth.

Putin heads for his table, glances at the guests, among them the most powerful people in the country, and asks them to sit down.

But around two dozen men and one woman were already waiting for him;

they sit, all without masks, but many meters away from the head of state, in the depths of the room, on chairs without armrests, mute and stiff and with expressions that whenever the camera falls on them over the next hour and a half, as if petrified works.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Putin invited his top staff on Monday morning to what is said to be an extraordinary session of the National Security Council.

The president wants, he says right at the beginning, to "discuss" the situation in Donbass.

Wants to “listen to colleagues” and jointly “determine” how to deal with the requests from the “people's republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Duma, the Russian lower house, to him, Putin, to recognize the entities as states.

This decision, which Putin will say at the end of the special session that he will make on the same day, will make waves in Russia, in Ukraine and far beyond.

But how much the meeting is also a stress test for Putin's elite is shown by its recording, which is completely unusual for a Security Council meeting.

Putin lines up his top staff like a severe examiner lines up his students;

he makes sure that none of his people can later say that he did not support the decision to break the Minsk agreements, which will surely lead to sanctions and possibly war.

Especially since on Tuesday evening Putin supported the claim of the “people's republics” to the entire areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, including the parts controlled by Kiev.

In addition, on Tuesday evening the Federation Council approved a request from Putin about using the armed forces abroad, as in 2014. Putin, the decision-maker, is lonely but not alone, the message is: everyone is behind him,

A staging as a special operation intended to take everyone by surprise

That is why both chambers of parliament, the Duma and the Federation Council, have to meet on Tuesday to ratify the treaties with the "People's Republics" on friendship, cooperation and (military) aid.

They do this unanimously and under the assurances of many speakers that everything is fair and legal under international law.

It is a choreography in which all the wheels of the power and media apparatus interlock and, like other major events of recent years, appears in its course and staging as a special operation intended to take everyone by surprise.